Terrain, and Maligs, and Hell Divers, oh my!

Ruined City Terrain
15 mm scale

Took a while but these turned out pretty much like I imagined them in my head.  I'm glad I broke up the grey monotony with some painted/patterned surfaces, and coloured wreckage and casualties to keep it interesting.  They were probably a lot more work than most gamers would want to put into random ruins though!


Ion Age Maligs
15 mm

The violent, dirty, undisciplined greenskins of the Ion Age universe!  And dumb, so so dumb.  Dirty deeds done dirt cheap, but as usual you get what you pay for.  Want them to blow up a radar station?  Oops, they blew up your favorite radio station.

"Ay mates, three to one!  We can take 'im!"

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One more thing... Though I usually try to avoid posting "Look what I bought!", I feel ClearHorizon Miniatures' strong initial releases deserve as much promotion as possible.

Professional packaging :)

My personal favorites...

What possessed me to buy all these Hell Divers?  Oh right, they're a really nice lineup.  I think I got all the infantry packs that are currently available.  Looking forward to painting some of these!

Scatter brained

So I'm having a go at some basic scatter terrain right now.  Not my usual thing, but I figure I can use it for photo backdrops.  I'm a bit new to this so I stuck with standard foamcore "Stalingrad"-style ruins:

I do like to make things complicated, so I gussied it up with some wreckage and a few ex-combatants, molded from a Khurasan power armored trooper and Mekanoid.  This gives a satisfying half-buried look without having to saw a metal figure in half lengthwise:

Next step is to spray prime everything... I hope I sealed the foam well enough.

Recon Thing

Riflething Scout Buggy
15 mm scale

Designed for rapid reconnaissance of dense urban areas, this lightly-armoured buggy allows Riflethings to get in and out, relying on speed and good steering to avoid small arms fire.  The driver is protected by slug-resistant, laser-ablative canopy; the gunner is exposed, but packs a punch with a plasma projector whose effects on infantry are best described as "horribly demoralizing".

This was a fun stress buster in the week after baby #2 was born, the chassis painting came together surprisingly quickly, though detailing took a bit of time later.  Frankly, I tried not to sweat the clumsy brushwork too much, in the interests of finishing it quickly.  The display base is as basic as it gets... printed paper on craft plywood, just something to place it on really.

We did it!

Over a week past schedule, like so many things I have a hand in creating ;)

Need for Speed

Riflething Urban Ops Recon Buggy
15 mm scale

This vehicle started life as a Hot Wheels "Max Steel Turbo Racer" toy:

Pretty cool wheels... But I knew I could do better.  Luckily, this toy is almost exactly in-scale (judging by the driver's cockpit), and solidly futuristic-looking, so it didn't need much work.  I swapped the spindly front wheels for some from another car and added a turret (armed with a Space Marine plasma pistol) and Riflething gunner.  I don't do many vehicles to go with my figures, so this is kind of a step out for me.  We'll see how much painting gets done before the baby arrives, but I'll definitely have a go at it...

Bored? Games!

One of the things the missus and I do to avoid becoming TV zombies is try new board games.  We don't have a big budget or a games library nearby, but fortunately we have interesting friends, who have their own collections of interesting titles.  We regularly play the ever-popular Carcassonne, Zombies!!!, and Settlers of Catan, but recently we've had a chance to try a few interesting new ones:

Candamir: the First Settlers

(not my photo)

Designed by "Settlers" maker Klaus Teuber, this Norse-flavoured game revolves around resource collecting quests and building items for victory points.  Each player plays as a different character, with a few unique strengths and bonuses, so it's a little like a "canned" RPG.  During each turn you venture forth from town towards an objective square, drawing cards to see if each square you pass through allows free travel, or requires you to fight an enemy or perform a risky task to proceed.  Resources gained from quests are used to brew potions to help your character, or build items for different merchants in town, and the first player to make 10 items wins.  There's an "XP" system too so your character can buff their abilities over the course of the game (unless you suck at it, like I did).  Lots of fun, and not too hard to learn either.

Ticket to Ride

(definitely not my photo)

This is a railway building game that can require you to be pretty sneaky in plain sight of your opponents.  You collect same-coloured train car cards in your hand to build stretches of track between cities across a map of Europe and Russia (there are, of course, different geographical sets).  Each player has secret objective cards ("Destination Tickets") for long multi-track stretches that they can complete for extra points, while trying to discern their competitors' objectives and disrupt them.  At the end whoever completes the most objectives and has the longest tracks wins.  This is by far the easiest of these three games to learn, but it has some intense play mechanics and a good balance of skill and luck.

Tzolk'in: the Mayan Calendar

Holy crap.

My wife bought this for herself as a birthday gift.  Wow.  I'm pretty sure this is the most complicated board game ever made.  The board consists of six interlocking gears, based on the cyclical Mayan/Aztec calendar.  Briefly, you place and remove worker pieces on the gears, paying corn to place them and collecting benefits when you remove them.  The thing is, the gears MOVE every turn, so where you place your worker is not where they end up a few turns later. There's a "buy low, sell high" dynamic in how/when workers are placed/removed, but where the game gets really nuts is how this interacts with the temple tracks (points for pleasing the gods), technology tracks (bonuses and multipliers to boost your resources), and buildings and monuments (a bunch of other stuff).  We haven't even played a full game yet, and it took me 40 minutes just to set up the board (probably incorrectly) so I won't even pretend to say I understand it.  But it looks challenging and fun once you learn it.

Shia Khan conversions (and big news)

Garafraxian Black Guards
15 mm

The quasi-humanoid, photosynthetic Garafraxians (colloquially called "Chloros") use heavy armour to protect their fragile bodies during combat.  Their long eye stalks give them excellent depth perception and peripheral vision however, so they generally extend them out of their suits except when in immediate danger.  The suits are lined with red-LED arrays to maintain their metabolism far away from their home star's nourishing rays.

We have another baby on the way... arriving in only a few weeks now, whoa! So I expect that I'll be posting pretty sporadically for a while.  But just like last time, I'll be back, so stay tuned :)

I did want to squeeze in at least one more fun project before our due date, however.  I wasn't sure what to do with these cool Shia Khan Pioneers when I ordered them, but once I got a good look at them I knew I couldn't not convert them into something weirder.

As Chloro shock troops poured in from the docking ring, Fett found himself
in the uncomfortable position of fleeing away from his ride off the station.

Kind of a goofy B-movie look here, but I like it.  All I really did was stick in wires with drops of epoxy on the ends, and sculpt the tentacle/pincer things over their human hands.  Well within my constraints of talent, fortunately.